


The Universe's greater design

by Rheah



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, BYG, Essay, F/F, Fluff, The Time Machine - Freeform, sorry about that it had to, time travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 01:21:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14297658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rheah/pseuds/Rheah
Summary: The AU in which Myka and Helena are soulmates and their love story defies space and time.





	The Universe's greater design

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written in while and this started out as an essay that I handed over to my teacher on the different meanings of "design". She loved it and corrected it so I want to thank my English teacher and beta. Also special shoutout to RoseWilliams15 for all the help she gave me.

Myka often dreamt of a different world. One where soulmates were just fiction and people weren’t born with their soulmates’ last words to them branded on their skin.

The Universe was cold and empty and meaningless. No greater design lay in the stars. Except for the one thing that controlled her entire fate: the neat cursive on her shoulder. An imprinted tattoo that had grazed her skin from the moment she was born. No one knew where it came from. Everyone had them, everyone knew what it meant and everyone resented them.

Some had tried to get rid of those words, to burn their skin until they were no longer visible, to have even the faintest impression of free will. Myka knew it was useless: fire couldn’t destroy what the Universe had designed for them. Nevertheless, she hated feeling powerless, oppressed by grief and anxiety every time she read her words, the words that could be the last thing she’d ever hear.

Myka had grown up in a bookshop. She had always looked at books with wonder and marvel and had hoped to become a writer. Time had told differently, and Agent Myka Ophelia Bering worked for the FBI. But her love for HG Wells’ words had not faded. Out of all of them, something always brought her back to her tarnished edition of _The Time Machine._ An aching pain in her mind always reminded her that it was fate, and not choice which had let her be enthralled by the book. Because of the little words bruising her back, also inscribed on the pages.

And, after all, soulmates were a foolish concept, forcing two people together, to love each other when love isn’t something that can be controlled or regulated. There’s no design in love, no outline to follow. Myka had been in love once but he had been shot dead on a mission and their last words didn’t match. They were in love, it was real, and it mattered. And no design could take what they had lived away from her. Myka firmly believed that love was a choice and that after Sam, nobody, not even a soulmate could break the heart-shaped iron cage resting in her chest.

Little did she know that when on April 11th 2010 as she was following a lead, her life would change. The scent of apples wasn’t a usual one for a dark alley and it sent her body in high alert. Adrenaline rushed in her veins. Her heart was beating so fast in her chest she thought it was going to explode. As an FBI agent, she was normally trained to endure stressful situations. However today her body refused to agree with her mind. And, her instinct was right, someone was lurking in the shadows. Myka pointed her gun at the messy hair and cream-colored muslin that escaped the obscurity. A puzzling woman stood in front of her with an inexplicable smile as she tucked her wild strand of hair behind her ear. There was something magnetic about her, so dazzling and yet threatening.  Hair as dark as the moonless sky and tenebrous eyes highlighting her ivory skin.

 

“Good evening. My name is HG Wells.” The mysterious woman finally said cutting the oppressing silence.

“I’m sorry? Is that some kind of joke? Did Pete put you up to this?”  There were things she could accept but absurdity wasn’t one of them.

And still, somehow, deep down her soul, Myka knew that she wasn’t lying. She embodied Victorian _elegance_ at its finest, from the suffocating corset to the delicate cotton gloves embroidered with complex designs.

“Helena Georgiana Wells.” She said extending her hand. “I thought the 21st century would be more open to the idea of a woman adventurer.”

“It’s not…. I mean…. The Time machine, is it all true?”

“My books are only the tales of the most wonderful adventures I’ve lived. However, I seemed to have misplace my machine during my journey.”

“Do you want me to be your Weena and show you around?”

“I wouldn’t have dared to ask.”

“It would be my pleasure, Helena.”

 

Myka had never expected to become roommates with her favorite Victorian author, or maybe only in her wildest dreams. Helena had a lot to learn, and as the months went by, no desire to leave. A once snuffled light lit up in Myka’s heart every time Helena made a new discovery: the coldness of ice creams, the endless wonders of the Internet, or her delighted screams when she had learnt about women’s vote.

On a warm summer night, Helena suggested a walk down the lake and Myka agreed because she had long lost the ability to refuse anything to her friend. The moon was shining and its pale glimmer illuminated Helena’s fair face, like a supernal being drowning in an earthly gleam. Myka wondered how lucky she had been to see this angel fall from the sky. Far away a star quivered; or was it her glistening eyes? Had Helena been crying?

“Are you alright?” Concern rose in her chest and instinctively her hand fell down to stroke Helena’s. The simple touch reminded her of how empty she felt without Helena by her side.

“Yes, my darling. I haven’t been this happy in eons.”

“Good. Because the night is not over.”

As she spoke, a faint buzz rose from behind the trees and the water started sparkling. Fireflies were swarming all around them, shining as bright as the stars above. And their humming soon turned into the most beautiful nightly aria. Amongst the enchanting nature, Myka decided to be reckless, as Helena had taught her, and face her. Helena’s never-failing smile was for her, as it had always been, and so was the hand brushing her cheek and as she leant into the touch, her heart exploded. Her head that just seconds before had been full of unasked questions was now buzzing with anticipation. She felt her breath on her face. She watched her eyelids flutter, then close. Then their lips met and the world stopped turning.

130 light years away, two super dense stars collided, rocking the fabric of the universe, distorting spacetime according to NASA scientists.

Kissing Helena felt like so much more. As the world slowly faded around them, Myka got lost in the embrace.  Suddenly, her body turned cold and empty again, separated from its missing piece. Maybe love was more than a choice.

A few months later, Myka finally decided to talk about what was bothering her, what was shaking the fragile base of their blooming relationship.

“Helena?”  A dark head emerged from the library. “We should talk about the soulmates thing.”

“What about it, darling?”

“I hate it.” The confession lifted a weight from her shoulders, as tears formed in her eyes. “It keeps me up at night. I can’t breathe when I think that our entire life is ruled by a few words. I can’t live, knowing that I’m maybe not meant to be with you. I can’t, I can’t look at you without thinking that I would die if I ever lost you.”

“Slow down, my love.” Helena gently stroked Myka’s hair. “There’s a way for us to be sure, to stop worrying about those insignificant details.”

“But that’s it Helena, it’s not details for me! I love you. Without conditions, without restraint, with all of my being, and I can’t bear to look at you if you tell me that I’m not the one.”

“You’re forgetting darling,” Helena kissed slowly the crimson fabric covering Myka’s birth mark. “that I’ve seen your words. And that it is my writing on your skin.”

Myka was at loss as relief washed over, after months of worries eating her piece by piece. “Then promise me Helena. Promise me you will say them only at the end.”

“The ink in which our lives are inscribed is indelible, darling. I don’t think the Universe will let me do any differently.”

“The Universe didn’t make me fall in love with you. I did. And no one, not even the powerful cosmic forces will take me away from you until it’s time.”

Ten years and a marriage later, the diagnostic fell on their lives like an unstoppable sentence: Myka had terminal cancer and despite the doctors’ best efforts, it slowly ate her up until there was nothing else left but Helena.

“Helena, you promised.” Myka had trouble breathing now that her body was giving up on her.

“I can’t do it, Myka. If I do it, then you’re gone and I’m all lone.”

“Don’t be stupid, we’re meant to be. The cruel Universe said it so it will let us be together again.”

And so, Helena held back her sobs and with her best narrating voice she opened _The Time Machine_ until she finally reached that fateful quote.

_You know the great pause that comes upon things before the dusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees. To me there is always an air of expectation about the evening stillness. The sky was clear, remote and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the sunset. Well, that night the expectation took the colours of my fears._

And then Myka was gone. And Helena’s worst fears had come to pass. Absent-mindedly, she stroked the burning writing on her skin. Soon, my love, she thought, we shall be together again. Death can be sudden or expected but grief comes for everyone. There was no words or metaphors for Helena to describe the pain she was in. Each breath she took felt like thousands of pieces of glass shattering in her lungs, cutting deeper every fleeting minute. As if the agony would never end. Maybe it was her punishment for all of our wrong doings. Crossing space and time to meet her soulmate, just to lose her. They both knew this time would come, life isn’t infinite, nor is the Universe fair. It had placed them like pawns on a chessboard and moved them on a whim. It had decided for their story to end but who was she really the kind to submit to the Universe’s great design without fighting? She was a writer, she was the one moving around characters, inflicting terrible sufferings and her story would only end when she was done with it.

The Universe brought them together, was it by accident or by design? We shall never know. Love is foolish and wise, the greatest remedy and the worst poison. Nobody loves the same, and if two people happen to be born under the same sky, how rare and beautiful is it for them to find each other, over and over, defying all odds. Then what right do we have to ruin a gift from the Universe?


End file.
